CYCLE CLUB LEADER CHARGED IN BEATING

The leader of the Meriden-based Diablos motorcycle club was free on $25,000 bond Monday, accused of beating a city man who had been taken against his will to the gang's clubhouse.

Jack Baltas was arraigned in Superior Court on charges of second-degree assault, first-degree kidnapping and first-degree reckless endangerment. Police accused him of holding an 18-year-old Meriden man at the Diablos clubhouse on Grove Street for about 24 hours, after he was taken there the night of June 12.

Baltas declined to comment on his case Monday.

An affidavit for Baltas' arrest said the man's mother told police she took her son to the clubhouse -- a "friend's" home -- because he needed to be detoxified from crack cocaine.

The man, however, told police he had an argument with his mother over $30 he had stolen from her, then fled because he knew he would be punished. After his brother-in-law chased him and brought him back to his mother, she dragged him into the clubhouse, the affidavit says. The man's name was not released.

Once the man was inside the clubhouse, the affidavit says, Baltas taped the man's wrists to a wooden pole and beat his hands with a pool cue for 20 minutes. Shortly before midnight, another Diablos member reportedly hit the man on the back of his head with the flat-metal part of an ax, causing blood to run down the back of his neck. Another gang member is accused of putting toy handcuffs on the man an hour later, and removing the duct tape.

Baltas fed the man while he was handcuffed to the pole, and his mother twice brought him peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, iced tea and cigarettes, the affidavit says.

The man told police he escaped from the clubhouse by rubbing the handcuffs against a nail on the wooden pole, breaking one cuff. He called police June 13 after hiding in the basement of his girlfriend's house. The other handcuff, still on his wrist, had to be cut off by a fire department official, the affidavit says.

Police searched the clubhouse a day later and said they seized pool cues, a maul ax handle with gray tape and a partially eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which was found at the base of a pole.